Extreme Right to Life Beliefs

Governor Andrew Cuomo famously made some extreme remarks the other day in an interview.

He was trying to point out the well-known, widely publicized and talked about rift in the Republican Party between far right/extreme positions and more moderate positions, primarily on social issues but I think it also extends, to some degree, into financial issues.  As Cuomo noted, this rift is happening at the national level as well as within New York GOP circles.

While his comments were overly extreme (by design, I'm sure), he was making a point between what the majority of New Yorkers believe, according to polls, and what extremist Republicans believe.  Generally, he noted, somewhere around 70% of New Yorkers are pro-marriage equality, pro-intelligent gun control, and pro-choice. And if you were to ask them, the percentage of extreme right wing Republicans who are against those three things are likely about the same.

To a certain degree I resemble the poll numbers Cuomo referred to. That doesn't mean I agree with Cuomo's comment about there being no place in New York for people who disagree with the general New York State of Mind. I don't, unless he was talking about things like the story below. 

I've written about this situation previously, the Munoz case in Texas, where the brain-dead woman has been kept 'alive' mechanically because when she died before Thanksgiving, she was 14 weeks pregnant, and under Texas law, you can't remove 'life support' from a pregnant woman. 

Sadly, but not shockingly, everyone's worst fears are now being realized.  According to Munoz family attorneys, 

Even at this early stage, the lower extremities are deformed to the extent that the gender cannot be determined. The fetus suffers from hydrocephalus. It also appears there are further abnormalities, including a possible heart problem, that cannot be specifically determined due to the immobile nature of Mrs. Munoz's deceased body.

My heart aches for this family, who were denied the right to dignified, humane treatment for their cherished family member two months ago, and now are faced with these horrifying consequences. I cannot begin to imagine...

The attorneys go on to note (and this language is not for the faint of heart)

Quite sadly, this information is not surprising due to the fact that the fetus, after being deprived of oxygen for an indeterminate length of time, is gestating within a dead and deteriorating body as a horrified family looks on in absolute anguish, distress, and sadness.

As I was writing this post this morning, there was a report on NPR which noted that there are 30 states in addition to Texas that have some kind of 'pregnancy exclusion' in their laws. What these laws do is interject the government  into a family's very personal decision, in effect legislating a belief that one life has more value than another, regardless of what the family believes; or in this case, requiring the saving of a life that could have been legally aborted under state law, had the mother been alive and capable of making that very personal decision.

When Cuomo talked about there not being room for extreme right-to-life folks in New York, I like to think he was talking about people who pass laws that make families go through something like this.  And I hope he's right, that there isn't room for those who would eventually amass enough power to pass a law like this in New York.

I wish there wasn't room for them anywhere.